Accepted_test

Over the past five years, high-throughput sequencing has discovered many new viruses in the family Flaviviridae that have atypical genome structures, challenging traditional principles of virus classification. The Jingmenvirus (JMV) group consists of novel arthropod-borne RNA viruses of currently unknown pathogenicity. Kindia tick virus (KITV) is a new unclassified flavi-like virus belonging to the JMV group of the Flaviviridae family, first discovered in 2017 in ixodid ticks in the city of Kindia, Republic of Guinea. This virus has an unusual genome structure, in which the structure and role of the 5ʹ and 3ʹ UTR of the viral RNA in the implementation of its genetic information remains virtually completely unexplored to date. In this work, we identified regulatory elements in the 5′ and 3′ UTR RNA KITV, which are characteristic of orthoflaviviruses. This suggests that they hold functional significance for the replication of JMVs and the evolutionary similarity between orthoflaviviruses and segmented flavi-like viruses. Next, we plan to crystallize of complexes of the MS2 phage coat protein with the 5′ and 3′ UTR RNA KITV and their X-ray diffraction analysis. This will allow us to experimentally confirm the structure of the 5′ and 3′ UTR RNA KITV and establish the role of the viral RNA untranslated regions in the implementation of the genetic information of new flavi-like viruses with a segmented genome.